Review by Choice Review
Every Vietnam veteran, regardless of nationality, was traumatized by the war. Historian Li (Univ. of Central Oklahoma) provides fresh insights into the conflict with this book. Using the same formula he successfully employed (with Richard Peters) in their earlier volume on Korea (Voices from the Korean War, CH, Oct'04, 42-1093), Li creates an international history of the Vietnam War based not on archival material but on oral histories. For years, oral histories of Vietnam have mainly focused on combat narratives. Li takes a fresh approach by interviewing medics, doctors, and antiaircraft gunners, as well as a KGB officer who sought intelligence on the Red Chinese. From the vignettes, readers become aware of the advisers and support personnel supplied by China and the Soviet Union, which are often overlooked in traditional accounts of Vietnam. The recent trend in publishing about Vietnam has focused on fiction, as seen in the popularity of the 2010 novels Matterhorn (Karl Marlantes) and Girl by the Road (David Rabe). Fortunately for scholars, Voices from the Vietnam War is a significant addition to the vast array of scholarship already in print about the tragedy in Southeast Asia. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. C. C. Lovett Emporia State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
This volume of interviews with Vietnam War veterans adds new and surprising dimensions to our understanding of the scope of the war. Americans are, of course, well represented, including grunts, logistical-support troops, and nurses. But this was a war not only fought in Asia but fought largely by Asians. We have a retired North Vietnamese general who will never again see his son, now a U.S. citizen; a South Vietnamese officer now living a penurious existence in Ho Chi Minh City; a South Korean doctor; and Chinese who fought in the jungle or labored like Hercules to keep North Vietnamese railroads running. To round out the war, we even have comments from anonymous Russian officers, who built antiaircraft-missile sites and (more discreetly) spied in Hanoi. Some of this book is heartrending; some of it is as gripping as a thriller; and all of it will add to our understanding of the war.--Green, Roland Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Li spent seven years collecting the oral histories of 90 Vietnam War veterans, from combat soldiers to doctors, nurses, and spies. The battlefield experiences of Americans are sobering, but accounts from South and North Vietnamese stand out for their assessments of why the U.S. lost the war and the challenges of guerrilla warfare, respectively. But Li's achievement is most remarkable for the window he opens onto the lives of Chinese and Russian veterans; their rare accounts appear here for the first time in English. Although American policymakers feared that the Soviets and the Chinese were working in concert, both countries competed for the loyalty of the North Vietnamese, offering men and material from the beginning. American veterans had notoriously difficult re-entries back home, but returning Russians encountered a very bitter pill; Russia still denies any role in the war and has never recognized its veterans at all. "Nobody knew anything about our service," a retired, pensionless Russian missile training instructor declares. "Thus, our sacrifices are not appreciated by the society or the Russian people." Photos. (June) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.
